Let’s have a look at the numbers from Genesis mining and the Coinwarz calculators. We look at the largest contracts as they are the cheapest per hash rate.

![Genesis.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmb2aizyHF3W3ewDwPPZdDWGqtKW9pAa42rEskYep2MEM5/Genesis.png)

- A 200 TH/s BTC mining contract will set you back 26,000 USD or 21.827 BTC. Today that would get you 0.100656 BTC per day. So after 217 days you would have got your 21.827 BTC back. Unfortunately you will have to pay a maintenance fee which at the current BTC price takes about half your earnings, extending your ROI period to 434 days at least.
- A 500 MH/s ETH mining contract will cost you 14,000 USD or 319.6347 ETH. That should get you 0.8454329 ETH/d, so it will take 378 days to get your ETH investment back. 
- A 1 GH/s Dash mining contract will cost you 4,500 USD or 72.5689 Dash. That should get you 0.3045117 Dash/d, so it will take 238 days to get your Dash investment back. 
- A 5 GH/s LTC mining contract will cost you 60,000 USD or 6841.505 LTC. That should get you 24.61993987 LTC/d, so it will take 278 days to get your LTC investment back. 
- A 10 KH/s XMR mining contract will cost you 10,740 USD or 494.24758 XMR. That should get you 0.68034826 XMR/d, so it will take 727 days to get your XMR investment back.

__And the winner is....__
Currently the most profitable coin to mine is Dash with its 238 days pay back time. Since the contract runs 2 years, there are 492 days of pure profit. You can also look at it this way; during 730 days you will accumulate 222.293541 Dash for which you have paid 4,500 USD. That is 20.24 USD per Dash. Compare that to the 62 USD current market price and you will see that mining is better than buying.

__That good???__
Now there are a number of side notes to be made here.
First of course the number of coins created decreases by 7.1% every year, meaning that if the mining capacity would remain the same your profits will decrease by that same amount. And that brings us to the second point which is that the total mining power will increase as more people will start mining. As you can see in the above calculation mining today equals buying at one third the price.
If the price goes up more people will get into mining, increasing the total capacity end decreasing your percentage of that total.

__Estimate a price rise__
Suppose 10% of the BTC capital would go into Dash, that would be 1.9 billion USD going into 7.2 million Dash. That would raise the price about 264 USD making it 326 USD.
But of this 7.2 million Dash 4.2 million is locked up in master nodes, so there are only 3 million circulating. This would increase the price much more. Add to this the increased usability of Dash, - the Dash debit cards will make that you can pay virtually everything with Dash, Dash evolution aims to reduce the nerdiness of crypto currencies, Dash is much faster and cheaper than BTC, - and I think it is reasonable to expect a price of 1,000 USD per Dash in the near future.

__Lemmings will ruin your profits__
Then go back to our mining calculation. Do you really think that a Genesis mining contract will still give you 1 Dash for 20 USD? Of course not. If that were the case _everyone_ would get into Dash mining and the total mining capacity will increase until your profits are more in balance with your investment.

So let’s try to make a reasonable calculation of the mining profits assuming that Dash will rise to 1000 USD in a year. That would be an average rise of 1% per day. Let’s further assume that the profits per hash power will decrease at half that rate or 0.5% per day and will be 0.32 Dash on day one. After 2 years you will then have mined 71.685 Dash, just a little short of your initial investment of 72.5689 Dash. So in the end buying and holding Dash may still turn out to be better....